


Drown

by SilverEyedRaven



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Drowning, Multi, Polyamory, Suicide, agender Eren, genderpunk Armin, suicide by drowning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-27
Updated: 2014-11-27
Packaged: 2018-02-27 05:48:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2681438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverEyedRaven/pseuds/SilverEyedRaven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything is wrong, and she can feel it in her bones.<br/>She shouldn't have let them go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosesandcinnamon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosesandcinnamon/gifts).



> Do not write/send me sad things i am very competitive and will have to out-sad you. Carlee, Lee, you had it coming.  
> Comments & kudo's are appreciated!

Armin has never been the strongest swimmer.

Mikasa has known this for years, that’s why she’s always kept a close eye on them whenever they go out to the town pool, the river, or the ocean. She has to keep her datemates safe, always. Even Eren gets put under her careful watch, even though he was on the swim team in high school. He has a tendency to forget that he needs to surface for air occasionally, resulting in at least one hospital trip a year.

Armin has been getting better though, taking lessons. Maybe that’s why she let them go to the pool on their own.

Maybe it was because she felt too hot to get up off the couch. Maybe it was because she hadn’t shaved. Maybe it was because of the fight she and Eren had had about her being overprotective of them. Maybe the sky was too blue, or the moon wasn’t right, or, hell, maybe she was just too damn lazy.

All that she knows is that she shouldn’t have let them go.

 

* * *

 

 

“Mikasa?” Armin’s head peeks around the doorway to the living room, sunglasses resting on their head.

Mikasa looks up at them. “Yeah?”

“I’m going to the pool. Have you seen my sunglasses? I can’t find them.”

Mikasa chuckles and flips to the cooking channel. “On your head, goober. You sure you wanna go by yourself? Where’s Eren?”

Armin reaches up and grabs their glasses. “Dang it, I'm always doing that. Eren’s at the grocery store. ‘M just going for a quick cool off, Kasa. I’ll be back. Unless you wanna come?”

Mikasa looks at them for a moment, then shakes her head. “Nah. Got the AC. Be free.” She waves the remote at them in a “shoo” motion. Armin laughs, then walks over to her and gives her a quick peck on the lips.

“Ok! See you later!”

“Love you!” she calls out as they leave.

“Love you too!”

 

Eren gets back fifteen minutes later, and he boots her ass off the couch because he’s hungry and it’s time for lunch.

It takes two hours for her to finally start to worry. Eren keeps her from calling them though.

“They’re probably hanging out with Marco and Jean. Armin’s fine, you worrywart.”

Outwardly, she agrees. But there’s just this feeling of _wrong, wrong, wrong_ that she can’t quite shake loose.

Her phone rings minutes later, as she’s putting their dishes away, and it’s not a number she recognizes.

_Wrong, wrong, wrong._

“Hello? Is this Mrs. Ackerman?”

“Yes it is. Who is this?” She responds, gently placing the plate she’s holding on the counter. _Wrong, wrong, wrong._ The man on the phone is using the exact same voice that the police officer did when he told her that she wouldn’t be seeing her parents again. Wrong, wrong, wrong, everything is wrong, she can feel it in her head, in her heart, and in her gut.

“Nile Dawk, Ma’am. You’re listed as Armin Ackerman’s emergency contact.”

_Wrong, wrong, wrong._

“We’re very sorry ma’am. He died this afternoon.”

“Oh.” She says.

Nile Dawk tells her that Armin’s hair had gotten tangled in the drain at the bottom of the pool, and that no one had noticed until several minutes later. Armin had been pronounced dead upon arriving at the hospital.

Oh, Mikasa says. Oh.

Nile apologizes once more and tells her that she should come to the hospital as soon as possible.

“Okay.” Mikasa says. “I will.”

She holds her phone to her ear until the line clicks dead, and then the phone slips through numb fingers and shatters on the tile. Eren walks in.

“Mikasa?” he says. “Mikasa, what happened?”

He catches her when her knees weaken, slides to the floor with her.

He says something else, sounding panicked, but she doesn’t quite hear him.

_Wrong, wrong, wrong._

“A-Armin.” She chokes out.

Somehow, Eren understands.

It takes four hours of sobbing and screaming into each other’s shoulders before they can peel themselves off the floor.

 

* * *

 

 

A year later, they’re 35, and Mikasa is celebrating Armin’s death with a raging fever. She’s also got that feeling of wrong again, pounding through her veins.

Eren is fighting her about going to the party at the beach they had set up with their friends to honor Armin.

“Mikasa, I don’t want to leave you when you’re so sick!” He protests. Mikasa tells him that she’s fine, but it doesn’t sound so convincing when spoken into the bowl of the toilet. Eventually, though, she gets him to leave. He’s not the only stubborn one. She has to swallow down the feeling of wrong – or maybe it’s just more vomit – as he kisses the top of her head and leaves.

Nothing is wrong, she thinks as she slides under the covers of their bed, shivering.

_Nothing is going to happen. Nothing is wrong._

But even as she falls asleep, she _knows_ that something is very, very wrong.

She shouldn’t have let him go either.

 

Ten days later, she’s sobbing into a headstone that’s a pale and cold imitation of Eren’s warm chest. His grave is nestled right beside Armins. They used to lay out a blanket and have a picnic where Eren is now, sharing stories with Armin, telling them how they’re doing, assuring them that they miss them like hell but they’re still living like they would want them to.

It’s killing her that she’s going to have to do that alone now.

After she’s composed herself, she drives out to the cliff overlooking the ocean. Armin and Eren always loved the view, and Mikasa always loved the way the ocean looked reflecting into their eyes. Today the ocean looks like it’s alive, whispering and oh so green, and it makes her want to spit into it. They’re both dead now, there’s nothing truly beautiful to reflect in. She stays there anyway, leaning on the railing and looking down into it, trying to see whatever they saw that made the water look good enough to die in.

She lets her mind wander too far, and she can hear Reiner again, half yelling into her phone just before twelve in the morning because the ambulance sirens are too loud.

“Mikasa, Mikasa, I’m so sorry, he wandered out and slipped, banged his head on a rock, they just pulled him out of the water, he drowned, I’m so fucking sorry Mikasa I’m so-” His voice cracking, Bertholdt yelling, Jean and Ymir sobbing, Sasha is screaming curses at someone, Marco swearing up and down that he should have noticed, that he should have fucking noticed sooner, should have noticed he had left, that he could have fucking saved him, damn it –

Suddenly she’s half over the rail with tears streaming down her cheeks, and it’s almost like the ocean is laughing, screaming with glee at her tears, at her pain.

“Fate.” She says out loud, and it’s like the world clicks back into place. “It has to be fate.”

The ocean sighs as she leaves, and almost hums happily when she tells it that she’ll be back next year. It's fate after all, to die on the same date as her lovers.

 

When she comes back the next year, on the day that Armin and Eren died, it’s storming, grey and wet, like the sky has finally caught on that it should be mourning them. The wind whips her umbrella away moments after she opens it, plastering her clothes to her body and drenching her. She doesn't find it in herself to care. The ocean lashes out at her face as she reaches the railing, and for a second it almost feels like it’s gently cupped her chin, then it just feels like a freezing slap. The wind gusts harder and shoves her into the railing, and the sea laughs, like neither of them can wait for what fate has woven to come true.

The gale screams around her ears, and she thinks for a moment that maybe she should be screaming too. But she doesn't, no need for wasted breath. She won't need it soon enough anyway, might as well preserve it for someone else.

Mikasa stares down at the sea. She wishes for a moment that it was blue, like Armin’s eyes, or green, like Eren’s, it would make the bitter ache of sorrow less sharp in her chest. There’s a hollow pang of _wrong_ inside of her again, and she pushes it down, pushes it down, pushes it down. No need to think about it. No need to worry.

The wind pushes at her again, knocks her into the railing with enough force to bruise, and the sea reaches up and slaps her, dragging at the hem of her dress. She picked the nice yellow so that it would be easier to find her, but now it seems almost too lively for the occasion.

She steps over the railing. The ocean laughs, and the wind howls at her to get a move on. She sternly tells it to calm down, and that it will be over soon enough.

If she thinks about Eren and Armin long enough, she can almost see them in the rain just off of the cliff, holding hands, and standing on nothing. Armin has on their megawatt grin, the one that’s so brilliant they used to joke about how they could use it to power the entire city. They’re waving at her. And Eren’s eyes are so much greener than she remembers, vivid Technicolor in the wash of the grey, angry storm. He holds a hand out to her, smiling oh so softly, just a sliver of sharp white teeth behind soft tan lips. His hand is just a few feet away, hers to grab.

All she has to do is reach.

And then there isn't ground beneath her feet anymore and the ocean looked angry far away but up close it is _somuchworse_ and she wasn’t worried about that hitting it would feel like before but she sure is now and it’s closer closer closer and very very green and Eren and Armin must not have fallen with her because she can’t find them and suddenly it feels like she’s landed on concrete and everything is cold and dark and shes’s

Gone.


End file.
